Back to "Normal"Back to "Normal"From: "Rev. Ivan Stang" <stang@subgenius.com>
Newsgroups: alt.slack
Date: Mon, Mar 24, 2003 11:34 AM
Pictoor by Mr. F. LeMoor
GOT-DAMMIT!!
I was at this hippie fest called Winterstar all weekend, and it was a fine little festival, but the PEACENIK HIPPIES kept SCOLDING me for turning on the TV to see what were the latest facts, lies, pics and bites.
Until last Wednesday, I hardly ever turned on the TV except very briefly at 7 pm most Sundays, and even then, usually only to cuss in frustration; my one fave show, Futurama, is always cancelled or pre-empted, as Fox's revenge on Matt Groening for making them billions of dollars in ways they didn't think of.
But since Wednesday I have been frustrated when the TV is OFF.
Now, I know as well as anybody, maybe better than most, how slanted TV news is, especially during wartime, so I'm not fooling myself about fooling myself. I am a propagandist so I study propaganda.
"Our propaganda is better than their propaganda." There, there's a SubGenius War Quote for ya.
Anyway. These hippies. They're all so anti-war that KNOWING ANYTHING ABOUT THE WAR is apparently considered "not being here now." Well, I'm damn glad I'm not THERE now. I sometimes felt like I was the only person there who was feeling a tremor in the Force.
Now, I am not exactly anti-war. Some wars are good. My hippie peacenik wife said, "When has a war ever solved anything?" I said, "Maybe America should have stayed out of World War II." She saw my point. Her family is Jewish.
I would LOVE to see Saddam's regime rubbed out; I now wish Bush 1 had finished the job in '91 when they were CLOSE. The warm illusion of democracy and hindsight makes these opinions feel almost like they mean something outside my own head.
Whether an invasion was the way to do it remains to be seen, but now that it's started, I personally "support the troops," that is, I want to see them WIN. Even if it isn't quickly, which is probably where I differ with some folks. Once the battle is engaged, all the political stuff vanishes; there's just soldiers. Believe it or not I really do care about those soldiers. I was never in the military but I spent over a year writing and editing feature length documentaries about the Vietnam war, one IN VIETNAMESE. I was PAID WELL to sit in an air conditioned office in peacetime and be able to emotionally identify somewhat with soldiers of BOTH sides, Us and Them, and I earned that money.
It is NOT "just about oil" and even if it was, I'm so disgustipated with the willful ignorance and knee-jerk reactions of some of my fellow peace loving hippies that I am tending to ask lately, inspired by The Onion, "Well, just exactly HOW MUCH oil for HOW MUCH blood?"
On the other hand, I was thrilled to see a fucking quarter of a million protestors tearing it up in NYC and elsewhere. The right to protest the wars to defend our right to protest, now that's the Amerikee I was taught to obey.
I study CNN and Fox and all that, and see the GIGANTIC HOLES they leave in the Hole Story. Not sure what's being kept OUT of those holes, but the guessing is the fun and horrific part. During Friday and Saturday, I know that part of what was kept out of the holes was footage of MASSIVE PROTESTS all over the U.S. 1400 arrested for demonstrating in SF alone, and until Sunday they managed to keep that stuff down in the subtitles.
But the anti-war people can be every bit as two-faced, smug, self-deluding and full of shit as any Fox News miniskirted anchorwoman. DEDICATEDLY ignorant. "THE AVERAGE AMERICAN IS AGAINST THIS WAR!" they'll keep hollering, a statement which indicates to me that THEY DON'T HAVE JOBS. For if you have a job, and are forcibly thrown in with the average everyday American, you'll find that they DO want to see the old "regime change" and ARE behind El Presidente.
It disgusts me when either rich Republicans or jobless antisocial slackers claim to be speaking for "the common man."
I don't LOOK DOWN on the cowmanures exactly, but I don't have to believe in their shit, and I NEVER believe anybody who claims to speak for them.
I finally got home so I could watch the War news in obsessive peace, but I don't have cable TV, on purpose, and the REGULAR broadcast channels were all BACK TO NORMAL!! God damn dating shows and Oprah whining.
I ran over to where the Winterstar folks and guest Wavy Gravy would be watching cable news, but they were GLUED TO THE OSCARS. Wei and I watched that for a little while, but we didn't recognize any names of any of the nominees and had not seen a single movie that had been nominated, so we went home and read more history that had been written by winners.
So now I'm back to my normal Monday, wishing it wasn't quite SO normal. Or so FORCIBLY NORMAL-APPEARING.
It's TRULY SURREAL, is what it is. For days now, whenever I close my eyes I see those endless loops of green cities burning, and pixel-vision traveling shots tracking across a barren desert spotted only by a line of tanks. Did I REALLY see Ollie North giving canned speeches as a Fox News spokeman? Was that really poor Xanaxed-out old Ted Koppel in a gas mask, wheezing in the back of a hot truck? Could I really have been seeing GERALDO RIVERA standing there in fucking Afghanistan, saying, "We're doing Afghanistan AGAIN! Osama Bin Laden is up in those caves there behind me, and this turbaned old man is about to tell those 1,000 troops where he's hiding. Back to you Frank."
Like a long tedious dream.
So now I have to get back to the various things I left undone, like 4 months of non-immediate email. All that PHP based money making crap. The taxes. I have to videotape an interview with myself for a documentary movie about Robert Anton Wilson.
AND I have to unpack AND get Hour of Slack out again BUT I think what I'm gonna do is sit here and copy over all the music and rant recordings I made at Winterstar, and FUCK THIS SHIT. ESO and the ethnic musicologist Halim el Dahb (I'm NOT making that name up) premiered a collaborative composition called "Obession with Oil"... a recording I'm eager to evaluate.
And I gotta do the ads and packaging for the 3 new SubG DVDs that I finished last week, when I thought they were gonna take the borrowed video camera back away from me.
They didn't. I actually knew they wouldn't, all along. I was using the invented excuse of the Soon to Be Returned Borrowed Camera in order to motivate myself to learn a new skill and to get those videos revised and modernised.
I invent these deadlines, then convince myself they're real, then knock myself out meeting them. It's the Emergentile Way. The imagined threat of world war was an added incentive that I used this time. Hey, it works! The DVDs look infinitely better than the old VHS versions and will probably sell better too. I'll be kept out of "real" employment for YET ANOTHER MONTH.
This sort of self delusion has kept me out of "real" employment, and The SubGenius Foundation open and productive, for 20 years. "TO THINE OWN SELF BE TRUE"? FUCK THAT SHIT. Be true to yourself, and you'll never get anything done. You'll just sit on your ass, GRAZING.
To thine own self be A CONVINCING LIAR, that's what I keep saying. To myself.
PRAISE "BOB". Praise the soldiers and praise the protestors. Praise the rich assholes for giving all those soldiers and protestors something to do with their lives.
Whew, that's some cynical shit. But seriously, praise the soldiers.
They're the only ones who aren't just sitting or parading around, shooting the shit about all this.
I am BEHIND OUR TROOPS. For their sakes, let us hope that "Bob" is not
LEADING them.
--
4th Stangian Orthodox MegaFisTemple Lodge of the Wrath of Dobbs Yeti,
Resurrected (Rev. Ivan Stang, prop.)
P.O. Box 181417, Cleveland, OH 44118 (fax 216-320-9528)
A subsidiary of:
The SubGenius Foundation, Inc. / P.O. Box 204206, Austin, TX 78720-4206
Dobbs-Approved Authorized Commercial Outreach of The Church of the SubGenius
SubSITE: http://www.subgenius.com
For SubGenius Biz & Orders: call toll free to 1-888-669-2323
or email: jesus@subgenius.com
PRABOB
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From: "nu-monet v5.0" <nothing@succeeds.com>
Newsgroups: alt.slack
It's really fucking NICE to be NICE, ain't it?
Well, FUCK 'EM ALL!
1) The warmongering politicals
2) The airheaded asshole hippies
3) The murderous motherfucking baby killers
4) The Moslem Empireist dickwad wogs
5) The other vandal peasant wogs
6) The French
7) The media whores
8) The Maoist Hollywood egophiles
9) The flag-waving po'bucker patriots
10) All you scum-spurting, shit-slinging,
saddle sore sucking SubGenii
--
"YOU BELONG TO US NOW!"
"GET DOWN WITH MY SICKNESS!!"
--Kino Beman, brand name
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Subject: Re: Back to "Normal"
From: "Alliekatt" <alleykatzen@hotmail.com>
"Rev. Ivan Stang" <stang@subgenius.com> wrote in message
.
>
> I would LOVE to see Saddam's regime rubbed out; I now wish Bush 1 had
> finished the job in '91 when they were CLOSE. The warm illusion of
> democracy and hindsight makes these opinions feel almost like they mean
> something outside my own head.
He should have had his ass kicked a long time ago, and if we were REALLY
oppressing them then the whole mideast would be on their side shooting the
shit out of US. They ALL want that monster gone, and they know it, and
Prince AlFaisal certainly isn't putting up a fight because the Saudi
leadership KNOWS what it's like to be a bunch of tribal sand fleas in tents
with the bad guys trying to exterminate them, just like the Kurds are now
with Saddam's regime.
What the irony IS, is that America and Britain are supposedly fighting to
free a bunch of oppressed tribals that a hundred years ago would have been
the enemy, the Lakotas and Zulus certainly see the irony I'm sure.
Oppression is always a cover excuse for the real reason for war, it always
was, from slavery to extermination, it doesn't matter. It's about keeping
the resources flowing. The blacks and jews certainly appreciate the effort
but there's something else there, and it has to do with making sure that the
balance between the idealism that keeps relations warm, and the jaded
bureaucracy that rules the resources, remains steady. There is nothing
worse than jaded bureaucrats who manipulate idealism, and no side is
innocent there; the point is to make the idealism that works better for
everyone OTHER than the bureaucrats, win. Lesser of 2 evils I guess.
> It is NOT "just about oil" and even if it was, I'm so disgustipated
> with the willful ignorance and knee-jerk reactions of some of my fellow
> peace loving hippies that I am tending to ask lately, inspired by The
> Onion, "Well, just exactly HOW MUCH oil for HOW MUCH blood?"
>
I keep my demonstrable opinions to myself if they're not 100% educated.
> On the other hand, I was thrilled to see a fucking quarter of a million
> protestors tearing it up in NYC and elsewhere. The right to protest the
> wars to defend our right to protest, now that's the Amerikee I was
> taught to obey.
Shit yeah. It should remain so, dammit.
> PRAISE "BOB". Praise the soldiers and praise the protestors. Praise the
> rich assholes for giving all those soldiers and protestors something to
> do with their lives.
>
> Whew, that's some cynical shit. But seriously, praise the soldiers.
>
> They're the only ones who aren't just sitting or parading around,
> shooting the shit about all this.
>
> I am BEHIND OUR TROOPS. For their sakes, let us hope that "Bob" is not
> LEADING them.
Now that I'm REALLY working a job and making money, I want to see a world
that runs smoothly so I can remain doing so. Let those without incomes get
arrested, even if Bush was illegally elected. It would be wise to vote his
ass out of office after this is all said and done tho. And if that doesn't
happen, fuck the yankwankers, I'm moving to another slightly less corrupt
place.
alliekatt
---
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